


Spirit, Set Her Free

by stars_and_shadows



Category: Enderal (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Don't copy to another site, F/F, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:40:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23047924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stars_and_shadows/pseuds/stars_and_shadows
Summary: Defeat tastes like brine and ash in her mouth as she walks the path of death from the depths to the Beacon. And yet, within all these rushed revelations of herself she finds the allure of life is still strong within her. Well, perhaps not within her per say, but it is strong. Strong enough to facilitate a reckoning, a ripple effect. Hope in its purest form at its darkest moment.
Relationships: Jespar Dal'Varek/Prophet | Prophetess, Prophet | Prophetess/Calia Sakaresh
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	Spirit, Set Her Free

Once she was on the surface again, she realized how dire the situation was. People were dying. It was terrible. She felt sick. The quiet was deafening. 

Phaedra snarled at Tealor, blamed him, her grief turning to anger. She smashed her heel into his face, into his nose until she saw brilliant red spark against the grey palor of his face. She knew he barely felt it but hit him again for good measure. She felt it and that was all that mattered. She turned from him suddenly, fingertips twitching as she drew upon her magic, threw fireballs at those damned black stones from a distance. She observed with a sharp, intense gaze the Beacon’s light flutter and be replaced with blackness for a split second. But the split second lengthened to more than a minute when she destroyed the second stone. 

Tears were flowing freely down her cheeks by then. She curled her fingers around the last fireball, as if she could hang onto its warmth, onto her lifeforce forever. It arced through the air at a slight angle, seeming to wobble uncertainty like her lower lip did as she sank to her knees.

It hit the stone with a clank, a bang, then an explosion sounded and there was nothing left for her to hear. 

She could almost be happy for a moment. Only a moment. The silence that followed was deafening. 

That silence stretched on until, quietly, a voice emerged. Soft as the beat of a butterfly’s wing. The darkness turned grey, made itself into the shape of angelic statues in the distance and cobblestones and gently falling rain. She recognized this place. Yet she knew what she was now, and this was not her home. It was home, her instincts said, insistent. Phaedra’s home, her logical side declared just the same. For she was not Phaedra, merely a very well made copy. The path was set and she had to walk it, whether she wanted to or not.

It was clear. She had to make her way to the house. She stood, shakily. Her limbs felt heavy, sore, and battered. 

Despite this, she started up the familiar path. She felt… more or less… content. Rain beat down against her back, cold and stinging, almost reminding her of her sentience, her solidness. It was a welcome change from the eternal sunshine that usually permeated these dreams until it turned into pitch blackness illuminated only by fire. She stood next to the chopping block, hesitant because “Daddy” was mysteriously absent from his usual spots.

Well, she thought to herself, he did say he wasn’t coming back, thank the Wise Hermit and the Sun for that.

Casting her gaze from the stump to the front of the house, four graves sat together, which would be a perfect allegory for her end. Except, the fourth grave was open still, deep brown, nearly black earth sopping wet and piled in a heap in front of it. It simultaneously intrigued and frightened her, she stood, frozen still at the edge, not daring to look down. Against her better judgement she finally swallowed her fears and peered into the exactly six foot deep hole. (She didn’t know how she knew that, it just sort of popped into her head and she knew it to be true.)

She read them and studied them from left to right. The first two gravestones were pristine but simple slabs of grey stone, upon them was carved Mommy and Sister and the dates they died. The third was unlike the first two. Where those had been weathered but clearly well loved, the fourth was cracked, beaten, and defaced, wet ashes clung to the surface, smeared across it. She could make out the ‘D’ and ‘Y’ at the beginning and end of what should’ve been the plot’s owner, whom she knew immediately was meant to be her- no, the father of Phaedra. 

Reaching the fourth stone, she crouched to study it more thoroughly, carefully keeping herself from falling into the grave. It was also defaced, but the scratches had purpose and no ill intent. In such a way they were purposefully arranged to obscure the previous name and the date at which the mysteriously absent owner of the plot had died. Although, strangely enough the name had been replaced to simply, “Us.” 

The rain beat down harder, thunder boomed overhead and she looked up, wet red hair clinging to her forehead and chin. She heard a noise, a clatter, a door slamming open, it was louder than any thunder to her. She felt fear, deep in her chest until she saw herself emerge from the front door of the family home.

“Took you long enough.”

“Huh.” the shock and confusion that permeated her words only increased as silence stretched and she stared up at the person on the porch that looked like herself. 

The figure moved towards her, dressed in rags just like the ones she had died in. Her auburn hair was darkened, dripping wet, and she smelled like the sea, the salt on the breeze, the brine.

“Self-reflection was never my strong suit, my father made sure of that.” the look-a-like on the porch said. “I never wanted to second guess myself again. But here we are, finally.”

“I am a copy of you, so it doesn’t surprise me.” the prophetess commented blankly, unsure how to phrase the questions plaguing her mind right that second.

“No, no, dear.” What could only be described as the spirit Phaedra, bounced off the steps gracefully, child-like. “You are everything I never got the chance to be, and I thank you for that.”

“Huh?” the Prophetess mumbled again, staring, awestruck and scared.

“Don’t you see? Don’t you get it?” Phaedra shook her head, bounding closer still to the Prophetess, to the open grave. When the Prophetess reached out to touch her, grab her, she was already bounding back up the old, rickety steps, they creaked under her feet. Her voice jingled merrily as she swung through the doorway, her silhouette vanishing into the interior darkness. “Oh, silly!”

The Prophetess paused, her heart beat loud in her chest, she counted, one. Two. Three times that it before she tore after her namesake, wild with a sudden need for answers, listening to her giggle as the front door slammed shut behind her.

She threw it open and was greeted by an empty, silent, house, her shadow sparking to life with each lightning strike and crowding the foyer. 

\---

The bright light, the heat of it died down against their backs. Gone as quickly as it came, the cleansing, he thought. Phaedra must have done whatever needed to be done. He didn’t want to think about how it was up to them now, himself and Calia.

Speaking of Calia, she was crying in earnest now, he could feel the tears stinging against the back of his neck. She wouldn’t let Phae see her cry. 

They rode in silence for several tense minutes. They just had to make it to Qyra-

“Jespar?” she said, panicky, her voice wavering like a young bird taking flight for the first time, fingernails digging into the leather of his cuirass. “Do you feel that?”

“What?” he yelled back. But it hit him suddenly, square in the chest, before she even described it. This- hope, burning as bright and hot as that damned Beacon.

“We have to go back- we have to see-”

“Calia that’d- it’d-” and he can’t deny that he wanted to. He desperately wanted to, if there was even a chance- 

But his more pessimistic side said there wasn’t- there couldn’t be- she’d be nothing-

“Jespar, please, tell me you feel it too?”

He did. He didn't want to. But he does. Just like he didn’t really want to love Phaedra in the first place. It just kind of snuck up on him, or well, she just snuck up on him. He’d never expected her to-... He certainly didn’t plan to go on a whirlwind adventure with her or sneak around and steal from an ageless entity that shall not be named. Or get drunk together and take a train ride to once again sneak into somewhere they shouldn’t have been, wherein they were captured. She came out of nowhere, and now he knew she came out of nothing too, and- it was just like this foolish hope that maybe- maybe their story wasn’t over, the three of them could face the world, save it, if pressed. That her story wasn’t over.

“Do I really have to turn this Myrad around?” he said, desperate for her to suddenly snap out of it and start being the reasonable one again. But he was already coaxing the gigantic creature back in the direction of Enderal. 

Or rather where Enderal used to reside. It looked like a grey splotch, a giant storm cloud had simply covered it all up. He felt a bile rise in his throat. That terrible and intense hope flickered, fluttered like a damned flame in the wind only to come back twice as strong.

“We’ll be disappointed.” he yelled, not truly believing it himself. He didn’t want to believe that all was lost, not just yet. What was the point?

\---

The Prophetess made her way to the kitchen area, it was the center stage for her original nightmare, the prologue, perhaps it would be the epilogue as well. She was waiting to suddenly know in her chest that her very being was unraveling, she hoped her last thought would be one of hope and love, at least.

The scene that greeted her was… unexpected. A crib in place of the carcass and her lookalike, Phaedra, crouching next to it, wiggling her fingers above it like she was playing with a baby cooped up inside.

“Silly.” Phaedra said, her voice a teasing lilt in the near silence of the room. “You can’t make something think it’s alive without giving it a little something that’s living.” 

Her form shivered, warped like the waves of the sea, constantly beating up against the cliffs of land, dislodging stone and sand alike. Waves that drug her down to her depths only to spit her out miles from the shore where the prophetess was born and began. Phaedra gestured to the interior of the crib, a threadbare baby blanket lay, bunched up, there, an ugly yellow and silky thing with flowers embroidered into the corners. Somehow, the Prophetess knew her mother had made it or bought it, it was in a Kilean style and it was precious. 

In the nest of it, though, sat a blue sphere of light, the color bouncing and fluttering, like the bluest of skies on a sunny day in the countryside. Like the baby blue eyes of the man she loved and the color of Calia’s scarf, whom she also loved and the blueberry filling that made up at least half of Tharael’s diet nowadays. Blue like a shallow cove beneath a temple and blue like the color of butterflies she caught for a dead boy.

And the Prophetess thought, that, perhaps, she understood herself more in that moment, in her death, than she did in her final moments of life, knowing the “truth” such as it was. Or perhaps, wasn't, in this case. The truth may be relative to the revealed. But- she wanted to believe, if only for a second, while staring at a mirror image of herself and her own life force. That blue ball of memories, specific to her life, was what kept her alive. Kept her from disintegrating into the nothingness that she, essentially, was.

It was beautiful. The Prophetess barely dared breath, let alone step nearer to it than a few paces away from the doorway. Why was the crib in the kitchen, though, she wondered, absently. 

Phaedra beckoned her closer with a crooked finger and a sly smile.

\---

They carefully made their way back to Ark, letting the Myrad set down just inside the temple gates. Everything was rubble, everything was grey. The lack of color seemed to permeate the air just as much as the smell of death, of smoke did. 

“You go, I’ll watch him.” she said, softly, patting the creature on the head, swaying on her feet.

“Are you okay?”

“Find her.” she said, quietly, deadly, muffled by the way she pressed her face against the creature’s white-grey muzzle and breathed. It was almost as if it was the only thing that was keeping her grounded at that moment. Perhaps it was. He heard her begin to hum, trying to block out the world around her as best she could.

He started running. The columns were long gone, but part of an arch here, the remnants of a step there, a wayward piece of melted golden grating and he could see exactly where the Beacon used to stand, exactly where Phaedra would have stood last. 

And his heart, wicked and weak thing that it was, wrenched in his chest upon not immediately spying her distinctive auburn hair among the destruction. He circled the rubble, making out the remains of the Beacon’s frame, finding a black crystal shattered into several pieces against the stone flooring, another ground to fine powder and steadily flowing away in the wind.

He searched the ground, overturning rocks and rubble as he went, desperate and keening out her name every so often, as if she might answer.

Just as he was about to give up, run away as he was oft to do when emotionally confronted with something he simply couldn’t handle. And when he turned around, looping around the hill of rubble once again, he spotted something unusual.

Someone- rather- that he knew for a fact he wouldn’t have missed the first time around if they had been there. But the logistics of it hardly mattered now. 

He ran, tripping, stumbling, scrambling over anything that came between him and his goal, like a madman. Like a man high on hope and never wanting to come down.

\---

The Prophetess could not refuse her- her namesake. With a shaky first step, she drew closer to the crib. The smell of dried blood lingered in the room, the smell of smoke.

“So, we’re one in the same.” she spoke her first coherent thought, looking between Phaedra and the crib. 

Phaedra was not her father’s offspring and he hated her for it, hated her passionately. The crib was a testament to that hate. Her father, a farmer all his life- having to craft nearly everything they owned by his own hand. But Phaedra’s crib- her crib was lopsided, the edges hard, rushed and splinter prone.

“I am a part of you, the foundation.” Phaedra's lips quirked up in a smirk. “But you, you are something else entirely. Something I alone cannot be.” 

“Doesn’t change the fact that I’m Fleshless,” and the Prophetess couldn’t bring herself to say what she understood deep down, that she ceased to exist now and she shouldn’t be here. This was not hers-

“Yes. And that you will remain so. Even once you wake up.” 

The hearth cast exaggerated shadows across the floor, across the crib and across the two nearly identical figures.They twisted and fluttered in an almost mockingly and erotic dance. Phaedra’s ghostly figure seemed to attract the stray shadows, they shrouded her, clung to her like overgrown vines and moss.

“What do you mean-”

“Wake up.” The voice that fell from Phaedra’s mouth was not her own or the Prophetess’ identical one. It was soft, lilting, like-

Like the beat of a butterfly’s wing against the sands of time.

\---

“Phaedra!” his voice rang out clear and sharp in the silence, he checked her pulse. Nothing. He checked it again, desperate, holding her head in his hands, in his lap, her limp hand thrown over her chest in the wild frenzy of emotion that followed his conclusion- they were too late. 

He made up his mind to call Calia, get the I told you so over with but her eyes flickered and she flinched. Her chest began to rise and fall, minorly, but enough. Enough to constitute a liveliness she hadn’t shown a minute earlier. Calia came running as his voice was going raw for screaming, the three of them the only living souls on the continent. Everything smelled of ash and blood, and faintly, to his surprise, of the sea. Together they unearthed her, unbury her from her self-made grave. Calia, strong and silent and sad Calia, was crying in earnest. Happy, relieved tears slid down her face while she planted a kiss on Phaedra’s ruined cheek. They heft her up together to take her with them.

And then they go to Qyra. Just like they promised her they would.

**Author's Note:**

> Something I found in my drafts that I enjoyed re-reading very much after I got Enderal on the brain suddenly. I would say this is the least canon-butchering of my fix-it fics but I left some parts out, therefore looks can be deceiving & nobody could stop me anyways. 
> 
> This may or may not become a part of a larger collection called "Fire Starter", if my inspiration keeps up. 
> 
> Enjoy!


End file.
